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Ron Howard in Talks to Helm Competing 'Jungle Book' at Warner Bros.

Though we heard Babel, 21 Grams and Amores Perros director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu was being lined up to direct an adaptation of The Jungle Book at Warner Bros., the filmmaker fell away from the project due to scheduling conflicts. It seemed as if the competing Disney production with Jon Favreau at the helm would be on its own after all, but now THR has word that Warner Bros. isn't giving up so easy as they're currently in talk with Rush and A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard to direct and produce their live-action take written by Callie Kloves, daughter of Harry Potter scribe Steve Kloves, the film's producer.

Disney has already set their version of The Jungle Book for October 9th, 2015, and we'll have to wait and see if Warner Bros. will try to beat them to the punch. The Rudyard Kipling classic has already seen two previous adaptations from Disney, so it'll be interesting to see how this one is different. At the same time, we're also wondering how the version of the story Warner Bros. has in the works will differ from Disney's. At this point, having two competing films like this with the same source material is getting a little ridiculous. There's plenty of original stories out there to adapt. Howard also just picked up Mena for a future project, so he's pretty busy. We'll see what happens as studios move forward with their Jungle Book battle.